Bonnie Arnold (’78) and John Maxwell Hamilton (’74) headline COM ceremonies

Bonnie Arnold

President of DreamWorks Animation
COM ’78

A leading force in imaginative storytelling, Bonnie Arnold is the Co-President of DreamWorks Animation, a Golden Globe winner, an Academy Award® nominee and a prolific film producer whose work spans myriad genres and appeals to multiple generations. She most recently garnered the Golden Globe award and an Oscar® nomination for the acclaimed, run-away hit How To Train Your Dragon 2. Currently, Bonnie oversees creative development and production at Dreamworks, and is producing How To Train Your Dragon 3, the third chapter in the beloved and award-wining trilogy she kicked off in 2010, due to hit theatres in 2018.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 -- the follow-up to the Academy Award®-nominated blockbuster, How To Train Your Dragon, which Arnold championed from the start -- was the top-grossing animated film of 2014, with international box office currently exceeding $620 million. The film has also received the National Board of Review award for Best Animated Film and won Best Picture at the Annie Awards while receiving ten nominations. Bonnie will continue the story’s legacy with How To Train Your Dragon 3.

An accomplished filmmaker in nearly every genre, Bonnie produced the Sony Pictures Classics release The Last Station, which garnered two Oscar® nominations as well as award nominations from the Screen Actors Guild; the Golden Globes; and the Independent Spirit Awards, including a nomination for Best Picture. In addition she produced the 2006 DreamWorks Animation release Over the Hedge, the Disney blockbuster Tarzan and the history-making film Toy Story, which combined have earned more than $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue.

Bonnie’s previous production credits span a broad range, including the Oscar®-winning epic Western Dances with Wolves and the hit comedy The Addams Family.

Her first entertainment industry job as unit publicist for American Playhouse’s debut production, KING OF AMERICA quickly led to a variety of assignments including Neil Simon’s THE SLUGGER’S WIFE and Peter Weir’s THE MOSQUITO COAST. Her hard work led to her being noticed by Columbia Pictures’ David Picker and resulted in an opportunity to move to Hollywood where she continued to gain producing experience on films such as HERO starring Dustin Hoffman, THE MIGHTY QUINN with Denzel Washington and REVENGE with Kevin Costner.

Bonnie is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as well as the Producers Guild of America.

Watch the interview with Bonnie Arnold.

John Maxwell Hamilton

Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor in LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication
Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
COM ’74

Jack Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor in LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Hamilton reported at home and abroad, for the Milwaukee Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and ABC radio. He was a longtime commentator for MarketPlace, broadcast nationally by Public Radio International. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation, among other publications. In the 1980s, the National Journal said Hamilton has shaped public opinion about the complexity of U.S.-Third World relations “more than any other single journalist.”

In government, Hamilton oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, served in the State Department during the Carter administration as an advisor to the head of the U.S. foreign aid program in Asia, and managed a World Bank program to educate Americans about economic development. He served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps platoon commander and in Okinawa as a reconnaissance company commander.

At LSU, Hamilton was founding dean of the Manship School and executive vice-chancellor and provost. Hamilton received the Freedom Forum’s Administrator of the Year Award in 2003. Hamilton is author or co-author of six books. His most recent, Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Newsgathering Abroad, won the Goldsmith Prize, among other awards.

He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Marquette and Boston Universities respectively, and a doctorate in American Civilization from George Washington University.