Tuesday, April 11

Outpost at POST

401 Franklin Street

11:00am || Registration & Reception

11:30 – 1:00pm || Seated Luncheon

Event Co-Chairs

Victoria & Alex Lazar || Carey Jordan & Brian Simmons

Honoring 2023 Distinguished Alumna and 8x Emmy® winner

Rachelle Mendez ’94

Celebrating HSPVA Friends’ 2023 Community Honoree

Joan Vachule Murrin

2023 Distinguished Alumna Rachelle Mendez is an 8-time Emmy® award-winning television producer, developer, and showrunner. She is well known for her work on five seasons of Netflix’s QUEER EYE and was honored with Emmy® award wins for Outstanding Structured Reality Show in 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. Mendez Executive Produced and Showran Netflix’s SPARKING JOY with Marie Kondo, which received the 2022 Daytime Emmy® for Outstanding Lifestyle Program. She is also the co-creator and executive producer of HBO MAX’s streetwear competition series, THE HYPE.  Mendez Co-Executive Produced the critically acclaimed LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY & THE AFTERMATH, winner of the 2017 Emmy® award for Best Informational Series and the 2018 Producers Guild Award (PGA) for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television. To add to her many accolades, Mendez was also nominated for a PGA Award for Nonfiction Television of the Year for her work on UNDERCOVER BOSS, which also received consecutive Emmy® award wins for Outstanding Reality Program in 2012 and 2013. A second generation Mexican-American, Mendez was raised in Houston, Texas, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a 1994 graduate of the HSPVA Theatre Department. In 2021, Rachelle spoke to HSPVA Friends about her journey from HSPVA to Hollywood and how she fell in love with the power of non-fiction storytelling – check it out!