Diana Bob ’02 and Dixinyao (Moonlight) Zhu ’17 Named Recipients of 2025 Pitzer Alumni Awards

Each year, Pitzer College recognizes alumni who exemplify the College’s core values in their professions and who continue to interact with and serve the College. 

This year’s recipients, Diana Bob ’02 and Dixinyao (Moonlight) Zhu ’17, are living those values, especially social responsibility, as they serve communities often underrepresented and marginalized. Their work is improving the lives of communities both in the U.S. and abroad in significant ways.

2025 Distinguished Alumni Award: Diana Bob ’02

An attorney focusing on Indigenous rights and environmental issues related to public policy, Diana Bob graduated from Pitzer in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and environmental studies. A student-athlete, she was part of the Sagehens softball team. While at Pitzer, she was awarded both the Udall Scholarship for Environmental Policy and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship. Bob went on to graduate from Lewis and Clark Law School in 2005 with a certificate in environmental law. 

Since then, she has been practicing Indian law with a focus on environmental and natural resources law, including energy development. She has served as a legal aid attorney for the Northwest Justice Project in Spokane, WA; a policy attorney for the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C.; and a tribal attorney for the Lummi Nation in Bellingham, WA. She is the owner of Native Law PLLC, a Washington State-based law firm focused on Indian law that serves clients throughout the U.S. She has been appointed or elected to serve on the boards of Planned Parenthood, Northwest Justice Project, Northwest Indian Bar Association, the Washington State Bar Association, and the Northwest Straits Commission. In addition, she is a former president of Pitzer's Alumni Board and currently sits on Pitzer's Board of Trustees.

In 2023, she returned to campus to deliver the alumni greeting to the Class of 2023 during Commencement; and she has also served as a thesis advisor and guest lecturer in several Pitzer anthropology classes.

“In her distinguished career, Diana has fought for Native American civil rights, and for the environment,” said Anthropology Professor Sheryl Miller in her nomination letter. “[She] is an outstanding example of the principles taught at Pitzer College.”

2025 Young Alumni Achievement Award: Dixinyao (Moonlight) Zhu ’17

Dixinyao (Moonlight) Zhu serves as the secretary-general of MyH2O Water Information Network, an NGO in China that aims to connect clean water resources to rural communities through a data visualization platform and customized data services for solution providers. The company's goal is to bring in new resources to underprivileged populations and improve their overall health. At Pitzer she received a degree in international relations with a minor in media studies.  During her post-Pitzer career, Zhu has focused on law, public welfare, and sustainable development. She has interned at a Category II center under UNESCO and actively participated in the 2014 effort to pass legislation banning single-use plastic bags in California, which was the first state in the U.S. to enact a state-wide ban. 

At MyH2O Water Information Network, Zhu leads the H2O Solution, a project that delivers solutions to villages facing drinking water challenges in rural China and that has successfully launched a long-term solution in 32 villages and schools across six provinces including Gansu, Yunnan, and Hebei provinces. In the past three years, more than 20,000 villagers and children have benefited from access to two million liters of clean drinking water. She also leads an online fundraising campaign that supports more than 50 teams conducting field research with more than 8,000 people having joined the campaign. Since graduation, she has maintained her Pitzer ties by serving as a Pitzer alumni interviewer and appearing in a video profile about the College's Independent Study Project.

Zhu was profiled for her work in the 2023 China Daily news article “Female role models make a mark in society.” The article saluted Zhu and her team for being “dedicated to improving the lives of villagers … and finding ways to make them safe.”