Outstanding Alumni Awardees

Penny Novick ’94

Penny Novick is a managing director at Morgan Stanley within the Institutional Equity Division (“IED”) as the Global Co-Head of Prime Brokerage and is a senior member of the management team serving within the Equity Operating Committee. Prior to this role, Penny served as the global head of futures and derivatives clearing and prior to that the global chief operating officer for Prime Brokerage. She has been with the firm since 2000, in VP and executive director roles in the Business Improvement Group and subsequently in the PB Multi-Asset Class team.

Penny serves on various MS committees including former seven-year chair of the Women’s Business Alliance, former 15-year IED Cornell recruiting co-captain and active member of two Diversity Councils. Additionally, she has been an active member of three Cornell University advisory councils for several years and is serving her second term on the Managed Funds Association’s Board.

Penny is in her second term on the board of directors for Rock the Street, Wall Street, a non-profit organization that empowers high school and university women by bringing the M in STEM to life through focus on financial and investment fundamentals.

Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Penny was at PriceWaterhouseCoopers where she was a principal consultant in the Risk Management Consulting practice having transferred from the Capital Markets Audit practice.

Penny holds a BS from Cornell University, graduating with distinction and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. She also holds a CPA license with the State of New York (inactive status).

Paul Sellew ’80

Paul Sellew is the founder and CEO of Little Leaf Farms, North America’s largest greenhouse producer of hydroponically grown leafy greens. The products are grown and packaged at its network of greenhouse campuses throughout the eastern US and sold under the Little Leaf Farms brand name in more than 8,000 grocery stores and fine dining establishments. He is also the founder of several other companies in the organics recycling, renewable energy and greenhouse farming areas. He started his career as a professional basketball player, playing in South America and Europe. He is married to Bonnie Ing Sellew CALS ’85 and the father of Chris Sellew CALS ’17, Eric Sellew and father-in-law of Liz Kane ’17.  Paul is a 1980 graduate of Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 

Michael Van Valkenburgh ’73

Michael Van Valkenburgh is the creative director of MVVA, the landscape architecture firm he founded in 1982. His leadership of the firm is an extension of his passion for landscape as a living artistic medium that deepens and enriches people's lives through the confluence of aesthetics, technology, and ecology. He has combined his love of cities and the energy of urban living with the lessons of his childhood on a dairy farm in rural New York State, where economy of means was a constant priority.

Michael earned a BS in landscape architecture from Cornell University and a Master of Fine Arts in landscape architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Michael is the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Emeritus, at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he taught for almost four decades. Michael received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 1989. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021. Michael is the author of Designing a Garden (2019) and Brooklyn Bridge Park (2021), both published by The Monacelli Press.

Prior Recipients

Prior recipients of the CALS Alumni Association Outstanding Alumni Award.