The event was part of the Yale INSPIRE Series, a series of talks with esteemed entrepreneurs and founders from varying backgrounds open to all Yale students. Weitzman, whose shoes have graced the feet of global icons from Beyoncé and Kate Middleton to Taylor Swift, spoke about his passion for designing and his road to a founder, entrepreneur and creative director. 

“Pay attention to the road less traveled, so much of what I’m going to tell you is not traditional, but boy did it work,” Weitzman said. 

Weitzman spoke about the importance of trial and error, advising the audience, many of whom were undergraduates, to learn by doing, instead of in an academic setting. He emphasized that experience in the real world itself is vital, and in his mind, the better alternative than returning to school after college.

He then shifted the talk to the time he spent working for another shoe company after graduating from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, which he credits gaining much of his business expertise from. 

“Before you do your life’s work, work somewhere else first,” he said. “If you do work somewhere else first, you will gain experience that is invaluable. We made a lot of mistakes, and I never paid for any of them.”

Weitzman then transitioned to speaking about the core traits he believes are essential to any entrepreneur, adding numerous anecdotes for each one. He referred to these traits as “truisms.” Weitzman’s business partner, Barbara Kreger, who was also in attendance, shot up and said to the audience and shouted, “or what we called Stu-isms.”

His first “Stu-isms” was about risk: the importance of taking them and how they had shaped his journey and his company. 

“It’s like buying a lottery ticket, if you don’t buy it, there’s no chance you’re going to win the lottery ticket”

Weitzman said that when he first started making designer shoes, a custom shoe market was not in existence. He had an idea to enter the custom shoe market through award shows — thinking along the same vein of how celebrities wore custom dresses — and took his first big risk by calling a stylist he knew from a previous job, asking if he could create said custom shoes for any celebrity. 

The celebrity happened to be Aretha Franklin, who showed off his shoes to the world while receiving her American Music Award in 1983, launching Stuart Weitzman’s name into a global fashion. 

“Within two months, there wasn’t a stylist in Hollywood that didn’t call to make shoes for their A-list celebrities … and we hadn’t yet even put our shoes in stores you would recognize.”

In an interview with the News prior to the event, Weitzman discussed various life lessons he learned throughout his career, from the real secrets he learned in school and how he decides what charities to support, to what inspiration looks like for him.

Weitzman said that his most important value was imagination and urged people to keep hold of it, even as one grew older. When asked how he would introduce himself, Weitzman spoke solely on his personal life, omitting all mentions of his career.

He spoke on his current values in life, and how he had made it a mission to spend time with his daughters. Outside of this, he emphasized his love for tennis and ping pong. 

After the event, Miffy Wang ’28, also an artist, discussed what it meant to hear from someone who had succeeded in the industry, emphasizing his ability to blend creativity into his business model. 

Samantha Kuo SOM ’26 spoke to the News, emphasizing Weitzman’s approachability.

“I own thirty pairs of Stuart Weitzmans,” she said, “So it’s really cool to finally see this mysterious man. Sometimes there can be barriers to understanding these really well known and high profile people, but with him, it’s like your grandpa telling stories before bedtime.”

The TSAI City building located on 17 Prospect St. opened in 2020.

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The discovery was based on observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, which began to orbit the sun in 2021 and was designed to gaze into the universe’s origins. These extremely large galaxies discovered by researchers challenge the existing understanding of galactic evolution.

“In our model for the formation of structure in the universe, galaxies start out small and gradually build up over many billions of years,” explained Pieter van Dokkum, professor of astronomy and physics and the paper’s co-author. “Seeing these ‘monster’ galaxies early in the history of the universe doesn’t fit very nicely with this model.”

These “ultra-massive” galaxies are also referred to as “monster galaxies” due to their size and rapid star formation. Instead of seeing smaller, low-mass galaxies that grow, researchers observed massive galaxies, some larger than the Milky Way, that formed early.

Researchers identified the galaxies’ startling sizes by detecting their light emissions with the JWST. There are often two ways to determine the size of a galaxy — from the stars’ light emissions or by material caught in the spiral of a massive black hole. 

Dokkum explained that identifying the cause of this light can be difficult, especially within early galaxies like the ones found in the study. 

“We see something that’s very bright, but we don’t know if it’s because there are a lot of stars there or because there is a big black hole there,” Dokkum said. However, “for these three galaxies, we see that the light is spread out. That means it’s not all coming from a single point, which is what we would have if the light came from material falling into a black hole.”

Observations of such “monster” galaxies continue to raise new questions for researchers at Yale. 

Josephine Baggen GRD ’28, a researcher in van Dokkum’s Group studying high-redshift galaxies detected with JWST data, is trying to understand how the current model can accommodate these unexpected phases of galaxy formation.

“This does not mean the model is wrong, it is just likely missing some growth mechanisms at the early phases of galaxy formation,” Baggen said.

To accommodate for the discovery, Baggen explained, the paper calls for some “accelerated growth phase” in the early universe, rapid growth phases that created the “monster galaxies” observed in the study.

These new findings add to the understanding of galaxy formation and it presents a more efficient method scientists hope to explore further. At Yale, Dokkum’s lab continues to study early massive galaxies like these using JWST data.

For Camille Chiu ’26, an astrophysics major who studies the chemical and dynamical properties of galaxies, these results could not be more fascinating.

“The findings are an important step forward in our understanding of how the first galaxies formed and are a testament to the unique and powerful capabilities of JWST in probing the early Universe. This kind of research would not have even been possible five years ago,” Chiu wrote to the News. “It is motivating to witness both the rapid pace of discovery and the emergence of so many new, unanswered questions.”

The Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter.   

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The talk commenced with a meditation led by Buddhist Nun and Bhante Uttama’s student, Javanañāṇī. For 25 minutes, with the lights turned off, Bhante Uttama, event organizers and attendees were all led to focus on each part of their body. After the meditation session, Bhante Uttama shared his life story in Chinese, translated to English by Elvis Lin and Averin Wang.

“To have a truly happy life, one must attain enlightenment and break free from what limits us,” Uttama said in Mandarin, as transcribed by a translator.

Uttama, who was born in 1965, divided his life into “stages of 18 years each,” the first one being his education. During primary school, he contracted a serious case of diphtheria which was almost fatal. He recovered and spent much of his childhood reading, later studying telecommunications and engineering in college. In 1996, in his second stage of life, he set out to establish a secular career.

Uttama emphasized how career-oriented he was at this stage stating, “I had an ambition to found China’s Microsoft, and I aimed to make myself famous and wealthy to give back to society.”

Uttama said that he launched a software business in 1996, which later became immensely successful. His software enabled people to access simple services in China like 114 similar to 911 in the United States. After years of steep growth, his company was approved to be publically listed on the Chinese Stock exchange in 2002.

With this success came new shareholders whom he stated “started a series of events that would lead to a turning point in my faith.” He said that two of these new shareholders “designed a series of plots to take control of my company,” going so far as to report him to a government agency, start a rumor that he was having an affair and “turned [his] CFO against” him. The News was unable to independently verify Uttama’s statements.

“At my highest times in life numerous people were willing to charge forward in my name,” Uttama said in Mandarin. “But at my darkest time, only a few people were left around, and some even took advantage of the situation.” 

He said this led him to ask himself, “How could human nature become so despicable?”

He spent the next 18-year stage of his life turning toward charity then buddhism. He fully embraced Buddhism in 2004 and in March of 2006, established the Beijing Ren Ai Charity Foundation. Uttama said he turned to philanthropy to “awaken humanity’s goodness.”

In 2012, Uttama founded China’s first Theravada meditation monastery, the Dhammavihārī Forest Monastery and was ordained in 2013. Following this, he worked with the University of Chicago on Buddhist studies and took a major role in establishing the International Academy of Pali and Tipitaka. 

Today, he has an influential teaching series titled “The Path of Awakening” and a platform “Happy Mindfulness,” which teaches users Buddhist practices online. He states that in this 18-year stage of his life, he plans to focus on giving back to Buddhist society.

While Uttama spoke about his journey leaving the tech industry, he sported a singular airpod in his ear, a large tablet in front of him, and even a walkie-talkie. The Rev. Sumi Kim, a Buddhist chaplain at Yale, joked, “I’ve never seen so much tech at a Buddhist talk — maybe it’s businessman turned ‘modern monk.’”

Following his lecture, audience members submitted questions anonymously through a QR code, and through rounds of translation Bhante Uttamo responded with advice.

“I wish you all can break free from the constraints of life and realize your own values,” Bhante Uttamo concluded.

Attendees could take English copies of the book Knowing and Seeing by the Myanmarese meditation master, the Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw. 

“I find it incredibly precious that we have these types of opportunities for monks and other religious leaders to come and share their practice and their learned experience,” said Malachai York ’28, a member of Yale’s Buddhist community. “At a place like Yale, where the focus of being here is learning, I feel we rarely stop and reflect on ourselves and our own mind and what’s going on with it.”

William Harkness Hall is located at 100 Wall St.

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The event, held at Luce Hall, featured Jackson School World Fellows Sokny Onn and Fausto Belo Ximenes, who discussed their work promoting social inclusion for people with disabilities in post-conflict societies.

Onn, who also serves as the vice-chair of creative industries at the Cambodia Association for Development and Advocacy, spoke on the role of art and culture in Cambodia in empowering those with disabilities. Having contracted polio in 1980, Onn now uses a crutch to walk on her right leg.

“Art is a way to express our pain and our issues,” Onn explained, “and I do believe I transform when I do art.”

As Country Director for Epic Arts, a nonprofit organization, Onn drew on her insights from leading an organization supporting people with disabilities in Cambodia. Throughout the talk, she reiterated that art helps see those with disabilities in a new light and emphasized the importance of art in advocacy. 

Onn highlighted the necessity of considering those with disabilities when writing policy, instead of adding disabled people as an afterthought. She called to “create an environment for all of us, not just one person.”

“We want to be a part of society. We want to party and make friends. Ask for our names before asking what’s wrong with your leg,” Onn said.

Ximenes has worked with the United Nations Development Programme in East Timor. Recently, he advocated for government policies to include those with disabilities.

He emphasized the importance of grassroots efforts and the necessity of individual change within these efforts. 

“We can’t create and implement possibilities that are inclusive if we don’t change the way we regard people,” Ximenes said. 

Ximenes urged younger audience members to keep those with disabilities in mind when writing policy. 

Suren Clark ’28, an attendee and member of Salus Populi’s first-year fellowship, said he was “surprised how backlogged we are in creating an equal world.” 

“It’s amazing to have World Fellows with a wealth of experience come and speak about what policymaking and advocacy in developing countries is like,” said Michael Yao ’27, the education director of the Salus Populi Foundation. 

Following the talk, attendees viewed a visual art segment from Onn’s advocacy. 

Luce Hall is located at 34 Hillhouse Ave.

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2024 PT5, a Yale shuttle-sized Asteroid, will orbit Earth until late November. This new “mini-moon” is a wayward asteroid, a space rock smaller than a planet, orbiting the Sun, that was pulled into Earth’s gravitational field. 

Before it became one of Earth’s moons, 2024 PT5 was part of the Arjuna asteroid belt, a cluster of smaller asteroids in orbit similar to Earth’s. So how did this asteroid leave the Arjuna asteroid belt and make its way to Earth?

“Every once in a while, gravitational perversions from Jupiter will toss [an] asteroid onto more oval or elliptical orbits. That’s when you start getting asteroids that could cross the orbit of Earth,” Tiger Lu, a fifth-year graduate student in the Rice Research Group, which studies planetary astrophysics, told the News.

Once it neared Earth, many factors allowed this asteroid to become our planet’s newest moon. All large bodies generate gravitational fields and the Earth is no exception. For 2024 PT5 to now be in orbit around the Earth, the trajectory of the asteroid had to strategically align with the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. 

The asteroid got close enough to Earth’s gravitational field that Earth took control of the asteroid from the Sun. This orbital capture is what makes it a moon. 

The newest moon’s size makes it too dim to view with the bare eye or even an amateur telescope. 

Yet, the Earth is just a temporary home for 2024 PT5. The asteroid is expected to resume its journey through the solar system on Nov. 25. 

“The Earth, the Moon and the Sun are all pulling on each other with their own gravity,” Garret Levine, astronomy doctoral candidate specializing in planetary astrophysics, said. “It will eventually leave the system because it’s on an unstable orbit, it’s kind of a temporary capture.” 

While it’s with Earth, what does this extra mini-moon mean to the average Earth dweller? The tides still rise and fall thanks to our — old — Moon, the Earth still rotates around the Sun, and our days are still 24 hours. However, an asteroid so close to Earth presents an alarming question about possible threats from asteroids. 

NASA has taken that into consideration through the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which was a mission that tested planetary defense against near-Earth objects like asteroids.

Dr. Jay W. McMahon who worked as a scientist on the NASA DART project assures to, “not [be] too worried, at least about a big [asteroid]. We are confident that we know where all of the large asteroids are and that none of them will hit the Earth anytime soon.” 

NASA is also launching the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission to track smaller asteroids according to Dr. McMahon. The two missions are focused on tracking asteroids and preventing their collision with Earth.

Asteroids were formed at the birth of the solar system.

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