Congratulations to the Tisch alumni and former students named on the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 List! The annual list highlights today's brightest young entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars.
This year, 6 Tisch alumni and former students were recognized across four categories: Art & Style, Games, Hollywood & Entertainment, Marketing & Advertising, and Music. See the Tisch awardees below and click here for the full list.
Art & Style
Denise Hewitt '24 (BFA, Photography & Imaging)
Denise Hewitt is a Brooklyn-born photographer who captures cinematic, intimate portraits of leaders and trailblazers in arts and entertainment. She shot her first magazine cover at 17, and has covered events ranging from the Met Gala to the Apollo Theatre Benefit, working with companies like Converse, Vogue, Instagram and Hypebeast.
Games
Julian Cordero '19 (BFA, NYU Game Center)
Julian Cordero is the lead developer of "Despelote," a game which combines autobiography with the mechanics of a sports game, inviting players to experience a day of Cordero's soccer-obsessed childhood in Quito, Ecuador, his hometown, during the 2002 World Cup. After graduating from NYU's Game Center, Cordero raised almost $750,000 in funding before it was released by the well-known indie publisher Panic, and this year, it won the award for excellence in audio at the Independent Games Festival Awards, and was nominated for excellence in narrative and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for the year's best independent game.
Hollywood & Entertainment
Juilliard graduate Alex Lin is a rising playwright who has won the Stavis Award and two Kennedy Center awards. Also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Lin writes to explore complex women and power while also working to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and pop culture. Lin has received seven commissions and had two plays premiere at major New York theaters in the same season: "LAOWANG" at Primary Stages and "Chinese Republicans" at the internationally acclaimed Roundabout Theatre. Roundabout Theatre and Primary Stages will submit Lin for Pulitzer Prize consideration in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
Marketing & Advertising
Eli Taylor-Lemire (Kanbar Institute, Film & TV)
Coding the first version of Posh in their dorm after meeting sophomore year, Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire built out a platform anyone could use to scale their events. Launching in October 2020, the duo dropped out of college in May 2021 after raising $1.5M. Since then they have raised close to $40M in funding. Now, Posh is a full-stack event management and marketing platform powering everything from dinner parties to massive music festivals. Last summer, POSH raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Goodwater Capital. POSH has amassed more than 6 million users and more than $250 million in ticket sales.
Music
Audrey Nuna (Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music)
50 million monthly Spotify listeners strong, Audrey Nuna's tracks for 2025 animated film "K Pop Demon Hunters" have taken the internet by storm. Leading the charge is the TikTok-viral "Golden," a song (streamed over 1 billion times) that received not one, but four Grammy nominations, including for Song of The Year. Nuna started releasing music independently in 2018, and a year later, she signed with Arista Records and released a track with Jack Harlow. Her debut album, "A Liquid Breakfast," dropped in 2021.
Audrey Hobert '21 (BFA, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing)
Audrey Hobert got her start writing music for some of indie-pop's most sensational rising stars. Working originally as a staff writer for Nickelodeon, she ventured into songwriting in 2024 with close friend Gracie Abrams (with whom she graduated fifth grade). Cowriting seven songs with Abrams including breakout singles "That's So True" and "I Love You, I'm Sorry," Hobert then wrote songs with Alessi Rose and Juliet Ivy under contract at Universal Music Group, before signing with RCA Records to make her own music. "Sue Me," Hobert's single off debut album "Who's the Clown?" is only the fifth song she's ever written alone, and now has over 31 million streams on Spotify. She's now on a tour spanning 19 cities across North America and Europe.
*We apologize for any omissions. Please send edits or additions to tsoa.alumni@nyu.edu.