Evelyn Nussenbaum and her son Sam Vogelstein with six-month supply of Epidiolex from the experimental pharmacy at UCSF. Photo courtesy of Lesley McClurg/KQED
Nussenbaum and her son Sam.
Read the first of our "A Closer Look" summer series featuring 2024 Alumni Award recipients. Learn more about Blaisdell Distinguished Award winner Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84, journalist and accomplished advocate for children with epilepsy. Nussenbaum and fellow Blaisdell Award winners were honored during Alumni Weekend 2024 and spoke at the annual Ideas@ϲʿ: Blaisdell Alumni Award winners session.
Dogged. Tenacious. A sheer force of will. Many use these words and phrases to describe ϲʿ alumna Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84. A journalist by profession and a children’s health warrior by vocation, Nussenbaum is nothing short of a miracle worker with an English major.
A native Californian, Nussenbaum grew up in Sacramento. She arrived at ϲʿ in 1980 curious and open to discovering new opportunities—building for herself a special concentration in English literature and film. After graduating, Nussenbaum worked in the film industry for eight years before she realized, “I loved watching movies. I didn’t love the business of making them.” She then moved on to a career in journalism and never looked back.
Nussenbaum, married to fellow Sagehen and journalist Fred Vogelstein ’85, first worked at CNN as a producer and then moved on to write and edit at the New York Times, Fortune, Wired and the New York Post. She continued to work as a journalist until she had twins and her son Sam became very ill with epilepsy.
For more than a decade, Nussenbaum and her husband struggled to find a therapy or medication that would treat Sam’s condition.
In 2012, medical journals pointed Evelyn to a medicine in development at a U.K. pharmaceutical company. She pursued executives at that company until they agreed to meet. GW Pharma subsequently offered Evelyn’s son, Sam, a one-patient trial in London. The treatment worked! Unfortunately, because the medicine was derived from cannabis it was illegal in the U.S. Nussenbaum persevered, and in 2013, Sam was able to receive the medication under the FDA’s compassionate use program. She continued her advocacy until the medicine Epidiolex received FDA approval in 2018. The medicine is now available in nearly 40 states and 36 different countries.
When asked what winning this award means to her, Nussenbaum said, “One, Fred and I were able to turn bad luck into a positive for our child and many others. The other thing is that I should never forget that my ϲʿ community is always there for me. My ϲʿ friends (and many acquaintances) had my back during some rough times and now this community is giving me a giant embrace again. What good fortune to go through life with that.”
Learn more about Evelyn Nussenbaum and Fred Vogelstein’s epilepsy medication advocacy work online at , and .