UMSL alumni Charli Cooksey, Kevin Cox and Cyril Loum were honored as part of the St. Louis Business Journal’s 2026 40 Under 40 Class. (Photos courtesy of Charli Cooksey, Kevin Cox and Cyril Loum)
The University of Missouri–St. Louis continues to be a proud sponsor of the St. Louis Business Journal’s annual 40 Under 40 Awards, which celebrate the best and brightest young professionals in the St. Louis region.
Given UMSL’s role as a leading driver of workforce development across the region, it was not a surprise to see a trio of alumni – WEPOWER founder and CEO Charli Cooksey, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Principal Investigator and Washington University in St. Louis Assistant Professor Kevin Cox and Mustard Seed Collective Founding Director Cyril Loum – among the members of the 2026 class, who were honored at a networking event on Thursday evening at Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis.
Find out more about how all three are making an impact on the region:
Charli Cooksey, MEd in secondary education 2017
Cooksey returned home to St. Louis after earning her bachelor’s degree from Prairie View A&M University in 2009 and promptly started her career teaching middle school English through Teach for America.
“The most important profession in the world is being an educator,” she said. “Those are my roots.”
But her time in the program also showed her how many of her students’ needs couldn’t really be addressed in a classroom. After completing two years with Teach for America, Cooksey moved to the nonprofit world, co-founding inspireSTL, an organization focused on expanding educational access by identifying future leaders from inner-city St. Louis middle schools and helping place them in the region’s top-performing college-prep high schools. During her tenure with the organization, the students who participated achieved 100% rates of high school graduation and college acceptance.
As rewarding as Cooksey’s experience at inspireSTL was, she found herself wanting to have an impact on even more lives. Motivated by the 2014 killing of Michael Brown and its aftermath in Ferguson, Missouri, Cooksey began thinking about ways she might push for systems-level change. After a year as the interim executive director of Forward Through Ferguson, Cooksey founded WEPOWER in 2018.
“I was driven to hold space for people at the margins to wield power and direct it towards change in specific systems,” said Cooksey, who earned her MEd from UMSL in 2017. “I founded WEPOWER because power is interconnected with everything: economics, education, health, the carceral system and more. And so, when those who have been locked out of decision-making organize, we have the power to change how systems affect our lives.”
Cooksey’s efforts through WEPOWER have been directed primarily at achieving two goals: One, providing universal childcare for all children under 5, and two, closing the racial wealth gap. She has worked as an advocate, pushing for greater investment in affordable childcare and better wages for early childhood educators. She’s also supported small business development through accelerator programs that provide grant funding, hands-on coaching and mentorship to minority founders.
The needs remain high, and the work can bring frustration. For instance, just last week, voters in St. Louis rejected a sales tax increase that would have provided an estimated $22 million annually in childcare funding for children under 5. But Cooksey isn’t letting up in pushing for change.
She’s grateful to be honored in the 40 Under 40 class and for the platform it provides.
“It means every once in a while the region and the business sector believes in celebrating those who dare to try and disrupt our region’s status quo and shift outcomes in a direction where more everyday St. Louisans thrive instead of survive,” Cooksey said. “I see this as an opportunity to talk to more people in the business community about the urgent need and opportunity to address the early childhood education crisis and the wealth gap that is stifling our region’s progress.”
Kevin Cox, BS in biology 2013
Cox owes his career to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. He was an undergraduate student at UMSL, majoring in biology with plans to one day work in the medical field, when he applied for a part-time position as a laboratory assistant there. He thought it would be a good way to gain some research experience and could enhance his resume.
“I didn’t really care about plants at the time,” Cox said.
But working at the center showed him how important plants are to human existence and how much knowledge can be gained through their study.
“It blew my mind how much plant science benefits society,” Cox said. “How much we rely on plants, how much they benefit our planet, and how much really cool open research questions there are that need to be addressed. That just really kickstarted my career.”
Rather than attending medical school, Cox wound up heading to Texas A&M University to pursue a PhD in plant pathology, or the science of plant disease, after earning his bachelor’s at UMSL in 2013.
While working toward his doctorate, Cox was reluctant to let himself dream of returning to Danforth or having a position as a principal investigator there. He didn’t want to set himself up for disappointment. But fate kept smiling on him, first with an opportunity to serve as a postdoctoral researcher starting in 2019 and then to start his own lab in 2024 through a joint appointment as an assistant member and principal investigator with the center and as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis.
“It’s really nice coming back full circle,” he said. “Now I’m back there running my own research program, and in the city that I was born and raised in and that I take a lot of pride in.”
Cox admits it’s been a bit strange working as a colleague alongside some of his former mentors, including Xuemin “Sam” Wang, the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor in Plant Sciences in UMSL’s Department of Biology who also serves as a member and principal investigator at Danforth. But he loves the supportive and collaborative environment at the center.
His research explores how plants respond to environmental stresses, such as fungal pathogens or high salinity. He works primarily with Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism in plant biology and genetics, as well as with duckweed to not only observe their responses to stress but determine ways to make them more resilient. The work has important implications for agriculture, developing ways to prevent yield loss or sustainably grow plants without using harmful pesticides.
Cox was honored to be part of the 40 Under 40 class, and he hopes the attention can help inspire others.
“The next focus is to really promote my research program as a place where we’re making efforts to improve plant science, but we’re also bringing the science to a diverse set of audiences,” he said. “I hope people look at my research program like, ‘Wow, Kevin’s lab is not only doing cool science, but he’s also making science open for everyone.’”
Cyril Loum, BA in political science 2010, BA in communication 2012
Loum is clear about what motivates him.
“I like to see people’s dreams come alive,” he said.
That’s been core to his work ever since he graduated from UMSL with a degree in political science in 2010 and went to work assisting immigrants and refugees in south St. Louis through a nonprofit – Caring Ministries, Inc. – he launched in 2011.
Loum, a native of The Gambia who spent most of his childhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before college, credits his capstone course in political science for leading him to that calling.
“It started with a research paper I was writing on how immigrants help revive 21st century cities,” said Loum, who at the time was observing neighborhoods in decline in his adopted home city and thought an influx of immigrants could help turn things around with the proper support.
He started Caring Ministries, launching it a year before the St. Louis Mosaic Project began with a similar aim to support immigrants and help them thrive in the region. He was still expecting to one day end up in law school and was pursuing a master’s degree in legal studies at Webster University, but he fell in love with the work of helping others reach their goals.
“It allowed me to find my passion, allowed me to find a group of people that I could solve a pain point for,” Loum said. “That’s really what entrepreneurship is all about: people and solving people’s pain points. I just didn’t know that was what it was. I just knew it was political science. ‘I’m going to address the pains. How can I support these new immigrants, refugees that are coming into St. Louis? How can I support them?’”
Loum continued that work over the next decade. In 2020, he also landed a position at the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at WUSTL, helping support entrepreneurs, connecting them to the resources and opportunities they needed to bring their ideas to life.
“I’m really proud of how I helped build the venture development ecosystem at WashU,” said Loum, who was promoted to manager of venture development in 2024. “It wasn’t built when I got there.”
His work with the center led to his nomination and inclusion in the 40 Under 40 class.
Earlier this year, Loum left WUSTL to begin a new venture, the Mustard Seed Collective, which works specifically to provide Christian entrepreneurs with business training, mentorship, coaching and other faith-centered support so that they can grow sustainable startups, nonprofits and other social enterprises. Loum’s faith, passed down from his parents, has always been a central part of his life, and he’s grateful to be sharing it with those he serves.
“I would have never guessed this is where I would have ended up,” Loum said. “But I thank God I ended up this way because I love it. It is really who I am as a person. I love engaging with people. I love engaging with great minds.”
