Three Heinz College Alumni Named 2026 Tartans on the Rise

Three Heinz College alumni from Carnegie Mellon University are among the 16 graduates named to the 2026 Tartans on the Rise class — a group recognized for early career achievements and a growing impact across industries and communities. The annual honor spotlights alumni who, within 10 years of graduating, are using their knowledge, talents and leadership to meaningfully advance their fields.

This year’s honorees are already shaping work that reaches far beyond campus, from public service and the arts to emerging technologies and global business. Among them, Mahima Arya, Moses Garcia and Samantha Levinson stand out for their leadership and commitment to making a difference — a throughline that defines the Tartans on the Rise recognition and the broader CMU community. 

Mahima Arya: Bridging technology and human rights advocacy

Bridging technology and human rights advocacy

Mahima Arya (IS 2020) looks for the truth. She balances a high-level career in software engineering with a deep commitment to human rights. In both endeavors, she’s a watchdog for integrity.

DoubleVerify’s mission is to measure the effectiveness and quality of digital advertising. Mahima leads a team that analyzes advertising performance on global platforms such as Reddit, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

“Social integrations are a fast-growing channel for advertising, so it’s an exciting and interesting engineering challenge,” she says.

Since 2021, she’s served as a fellow with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), which works to support privacy and combat the discriminatory impact of surveillance on marginalized communities.

In 2022, Mahima was awarded a Humanity in Action Fellowship to support her LGBTQ+-focused work with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. The experience fueled her ability to create research, op-eds, training and toolkits to amplify understanding of the harmful effects of surveillance technology.

“I investigated how U.S. law enforcement and prosecutors are weaponizing medical records and other data to shut down access to gender-affirming care. Understanding this kind of surveillance helps to protect the civil rights of everyone, notably transgender and nonbinary individuals,” she says.

At its heart, Mahima's ongoing advocacy work is driving understanding that sometimes injustice starts quietly, and early action is most effective.

“I wanted to give people the verbiage for how to speak about issues that start as a gut feeling, but are actually genuine systemic problems rooted in evidence. I can be a bridge between the experts and non-experts, and between complicated technical knowledge and the emotions of it all,” she says.

Story by Elizabeth Speed

Moses Garcia: Changing the form of musical theater

Director and Theater Arts Leader

The Tony- and Grammy-winning musical “Buena Vista Social Club” features a live Afro-Cuban 10-piece band onstage with a multilingual book, making it the first Broadway musical fully sung in Spanish.

As the show’s inaugural and ongoing associate director, Moses Garcia (CFA 2022; MAM 2023) played a formative role in bringing this celebration of Cuban culture to life onstage.

“The biggest challenge in developing this show was that there was no template to follow,” Moses says. “My boss, Saheem Ali, would often turn to me and ask, ‘What do you think?’ Joining the team immediately after graduating, I lent a hand and another set of eyes as ‘Buena Vista’ evolved through early workshops, script development sessions, design iterations, an extensive casting search and an Off-Broadway production.”

Presently, Moses is Broadway’s youngest billed associate director. He maintains Ali’s original vision for “Buena Vista Social Club,” overseeing the Broadway and touring companies, identifying new talent, rehearsing new cast members and adapting the production for platforms such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

He continues to work closely with Ali at New York’s Public Theater as part of the artistic staff. Looking ahead, Moses is developing his own work, including new plays and musicals driven by emotionally-charged dance music, where rhythm and feeling collide.

“The thing that connects all the different hats I wear is my hunger to evolve the form,” Moses says. “Expanding the form to invite new audiences is what keeps me going. Theater has the power to create and shape culture in real time, and I want my work to reflect who we are now and where we are headed.”

Story by Elizabeth Speed

Samantha Levinson: Advancing justice with data

Director of Program Innovation and Client Experience, The Bail Project

Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental principle of our justice system, taught to students in classrooms across the United States. But many realities of our world contradict these shared ideals; cash bail is one of them.

“If two people are arrested with the same allegation, but one has money and the other one doesn't, then they are going to navigate the justice system completely differently from the moment that bail is established,” Samantha Levinson (MSPPM-DA 2017) says.

Those with money will be released, while those without will remain incarcerated, both still innocent under the law. Addressing this deep inequality is the mission of The Bail Project, where Samantha leads data-driven programmatic initiatives to improve services for people in need of cash bail support. Her work includes oversight of programs that help people navigate the court system successfully, and the collection of data that makes the case to overhaul the cash bail system.

Samantha's work reveals that a common sense approach is the key to better outcomes, equality and justice. For example, delivering court notifications and ensuring access to transportation more effectively and humanely help people to return to court than cash bail. The Bail Project’s data show this clearly, with the organization’s clients returning to more than 90% of their court dates, without any of their own money on the line.

“Evidence is important to teach us how to replace a system that is based on wealth with one that's based on safety,” she says. “I'm right at the center of our service delivery work that we provide to clients, and I support our policy and communications efforts that help local, regional and national stakeholders build a better future based on what we're learning in our work today.”

Story by Elizabeth Speed