A garbage innovator and a budding journalist: Joshua Goodman and Paige Oamek are both SLU graduates who were spotlighted recently in CUNY’s second annual 50 Under 50 Alumni Awards.
The November announcement says the alumni selected represent “the University’s outstanding graduates and their social, cultural and economic contributions to New York and beyond … [highlighting] the depth of talent within the CUNY community, representing public servants, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists and more.”
Goodman earned an M.A. in Urban Studies in Fall 2023 and serves as Deputy Commissioner for Public Affairs and Customer Experience at the NYC Department of Sanitation. Paige Oamek is a general assignment reporter at Gothamist/WNYC who received a certificate in Labor Studies at SLU in 2019, and just earned a M.A. in Journalism from CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Running the Rubbish Revolt
Goodman said that when he was at SLU, “It was great to meet people who were motivated to engage with the big questions that face the city.”
Indeed, today’s Sanitation Department is attempting to deliver new solutions to the mountains of garbage the city generates every day.
“We’re essentially running the Manhattan Project of trash,” said Goodman, referring to the “trash revolution” that Mayor Eric Adams has promoted since taking office in 2022.
CUNY’s feature on Goodman says that he’s “reshaping the relationship between 8.5 million New Yorkers and the 44 million pounds of trash they throw out each day, utilizing urban theory best practices learned in part through study at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies – from György Lukács to Oscar Newman to Henri Lefebvre and beyond.”
After getting a B.A. at American University and working in a variety of communications jobs, Goodman came to SLU via the Mayor’s Graduate Scholarship Program. He grew up in White Plains and now lives in Chelsea with his wife.
“The work we do here is perhaps the most visible part of public service. Our work touches every single New Yorker every single day,” he said. “We can have a clean city. Making meaningful change here is absolutely possible, and it is absolutely complicated.”
Labor Leading to Journalism
For Paige Oamek, her SLU certificate in Labor Studies put her on the path to a freshly minted M.A. in Journalism and current work as a reporter for Gothamist/WNYC.
Oamek grew up in Iowa and majored in English and Philosophy at Grinnell College in her home state. Then she and a good friend decided to pursue something different in New York City. They found an apartment in Brooklyn, and Oamek interned at the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives though SLU’s Union Semester program.
Whether at SLU or the Newmark J-School, “I knew I liked being in classes with real New Yorkers,” Oamek said. “It’s important to be surrounded by people who have a stake in the city.”
She was drawn to Union Semester initially because at Grinnell, she was part of a successful organizing campaign to create the first independent (not backed by another union) undergraduate labor union.
“Getting an incredible crash course in union law at age 20 makes you feel there’s a lot more to learn,” said Oamek, now 26. Her political interests led to an internship at The Nation and a factchecking stint at In These Times magazine — which led to the Newmark School and her current coverage of a variety of issues.
CUNY’s feature on Oamek says she “recently reported on the 2025 mayoral race and deaths in custody at Rikers Island. She is also collaborating with New York Focus and Hell Gate on a long-form investigation into sexual abuse in New York state prisons.”