Thirty-One Exceptional "New
Americans" Are Named Soros Fellows For 2007
Three Iranian-Americans,
Shelli Farhadian, K. Cyrus Habib and Keyan Salari, are among thirty-one finalists in the tenth
annual competition for the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New
Americans.
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The
program was established in 1997 by Paul and Daisy Soros of New York as a
charitable trust of fifty million dollars to support graduate study by New
Americans - immigrants and children of immigrants. From over 800 applications
representing 141 national origins and 360 colleges and universities, the
thirty-one were selected for the two-year fellowships by panels composed of New
Americans.
Selected for this honor by an
independent panel that is itself made up of distinguished New Americans, the
Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows receive for two years one-half of the tuition
cost of their graduate study at any institution of higher education in the
Among those appointed
are:
·
a child of naturalized US citizen
parents from India, growing up in Georgia and receiving his undergraduate degree
at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, to begin an MBA at the Wharton School at
the University of Pennsylvania, after several years with McKinsey & Co.,
four years in the US Air Force as a captain, and now chief of staff to the
Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, to prepare for a career in global security
technology and serving the national interest;
Three had Rhodes scholarships, two
had
The 2007 Soros Fellows
are:
The Fellowships were established in
1997. It is funded by income from a charitable trust of $65 million created by
philanthropists Paul and Daisy Soros, of
More particularly, the Soros program
has helped, among other degree recipients, 68 MDs, 52 JDs, 50 PhDs, 22 MBAs, 14
MFAs and 36 other master's complete their academic programs.
"We founded the Fellowship program
to encourage young people with demonstrated leadership qualities, much like the
In addition to the relevance of
graduate study to a candidate's long-term goals, there are three criteria for
candidates:
·
creativity, originality, and
initiative, demonstrated in any area of her/his life;
·
commitment to and capacity for
accomplishment, demonstrated through activity that has required drive and
sustained effort; and
·
commitment to the values expressed
in the
As it has been for the 262
predecessors, the Soros Fellowship will be important to the thirty-one new
Fellows: they will be able to study fulltime; they will reduce their dependence
on student loans; they will be able to chose summer experiences more in keeping
with their career goals and not with an eye towards paying next year's tuition,
and they can plan their futures in the fields they consider important and not
those that will pay off their debts more quickly.
The finalists were interviewed in
15 are women, and 16 are men. The
average age is 25. 87% attended private undergraduate colleges and universities,
while among those already in graduate school, 82% are in private universities.
58% are in or planning to attend medical and law school. Eighteen members of the
Class of 2007 were born in the US; the others came as adults or as children,
often as refugees from oppression. In terms of national origins: Africa (1);
East Asia (9); South Asia (8); Southeast Asia (3); Middle East (7); Latin
America and the Caribbean (5), Eastern Europe (3), and Western Europe
(4).
The entire roster of Soros Fellows
(with this group now 293 in number) truly represents the world. Sixty-six
separate countries are the origins of their immigration history. In their number
are Jews; Baha'i; Sunni, Shi'ite, and Ismaili Muslims; Protestant, Orthodox,
Syrian, Coptic and Catholic Christians; Shamanists; Confucians; Theravadic,
Mahayana and Zen Buddhists; all varieties of Hinduism; Sikh, Jains; agnostics
and atheists. The 293 Fellows hail from 33 US states and the District of
Columbia, though most concentrated in states with the largest immigration. While
several grew up in suburbs, sixteen spent their early lives in refugee camps.
Many of the parents are professionals, though often practicing in underserved
areas; others are children of migrant farm workers, small businesspeople,
household workers, and factory workers. Some were orphaned and effectively
raised themselves. About half have parents who went to college; indeed
immigration was a vehicle for them to do so.
The 2007 Paul & Daisy Soros
Fellows were selected by a panel of 41 distinguished New Americans. They are:
·
Mustafa Abadan,
partner, Skidmore Owings & Merrill;
·
Leonardo Arriola,
PhD candidate in political science at Stanford
University;
·
Babacar
Cisse,
MD/PhD candidate, College of Physicians, Columbia
University;
·
Benjamin Chong,
dermatology resident in Detroit, MI;
·
Gilbert Chu,
professor
of medicine & biochemistry, Stanford University;
·
John Espinoza,
poet, adjunct professor at National Hispanic University;
·
Mill Etienne,
fellow in epilepsy
& neurophysiology at Columbia University;
·
Roben Farzad,
staff writer for Business
Week;
·
Maximo Flugelman,
financier
and composer;
·
Barry Gaberman,
executive vice president emeritus, The Ford Foundation;
·
Suzanne Goh,
fellows in pediatric neurology, University of
California at San Francisco;
·
J. Michael Graglia,
project officer, International Finance
Corporation;
·
Neil Hattangadi,
associate, McKinsey &
Company;
·
Joseph Hennawi,
Hubble Fellow, University of California at Berkeley;
·
Marife Hernandez Bell,
president, The Cultural Communications Group;
·
Paul Holdengraber,
Director
of Public Programs, New York Public
Library;
·
Bert Huang,
completing PhD in economics at Harvard University;
·
Jerry Kang,
professor
of law, UCLA ;
·
Marshall Kaplan,
director, Merage Foundation;
·
Navneet Kathuria,
vice
chair of quality assurance, dept. of medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine;
·
Jin "PJ" Kim, Director, FoodChange;
·
Miwon Kwon,
professor
of contemporary art, UCLA;
·
Frederic
J.
Laffont,
CFO, Coatue Management LLC;
·
Erik Lee,
program
officer, Merage Foundation;
·
Ankur Luthra,
vice president, Summit Partners;
·
·
Mehret Mandefro,
resident in primary
care, Montefiore Medical Center;
·
Guillermo Mayer,
staff
attorney for Public Advocates, Inc.;
·
John Mollenkopf,
professor of political
science & sociology, CUNY Graduate Center;
·
Edward Muecke,
Clinical
Professor of Urology, Cornell
University;
·
N.J. Nicholas
Jr.,
president, Navy Walk
Partners;
·
Marie Nugent-Head,
President, Printempia;
·
Alma Ruiz,
curator, Museum of Contemporary
Art; Los
Angeles
·
Thomas A Saenz,
Counsel, Mayor of the City of Los
Angeles;
·
Patricia Sanchez,
assistant
professor, University of Texas at San Antonio;
·
Anika Singh,
Skadden Fellow, Urban
Justice Center;
·
Quinh Thai,
consultant;
·
Dean Valentine,
President
& Founder, First Family
Entertainment;
·
Marica Vilcek,
art historian and philanthropist;
·
Alice Wang,
attorney, DC Public
Defender Service;
·
Deborah Yeh,
ophthalmology resident,
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor;
The deadline for applications for
the next round of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is
Saturday, November 1, 2007. Qualified applicants may obtain information
at the website at www.pdsoros.org.
Daisy Margaret
Soros
Daisy Margaret Soros grew up in
Hungary and graduated from Ecole Hotelier in Lausanne, Switzerland. She came to
the US on a student visa, enrolling at Columbia University. She later attended
New York School of Interior Design, studied at NYU School of Social Work, and
worked extensively as a counselor to terminally ill patients and their families.
She is a Member of the Board of Lincoln Center, a Member of the Board &
Executive Committee of the New York Philharmonic, Honorary Trustee of
International House; Member of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical
College, Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Venetian Heritage
Inc., and the Mayors Fund to Advance New York City; and Executive Committee
Member of the Rockefeller University Council. She and her husband underwrite The
Midsummer Night Swing Program of Lincoln Center. Mrs. Soros was the recipient of
the Metro International Fulbright Award, Lincoln Center Laureate Award, Ellis
Island Medal of Honor, International House Harry Edmonds Award, the Casita Maria
Gold Medal of Honor, The National Immigration Forum's "Keepers of the American
Dream Award," was honored by the Henry Street Settlement and received an
honorary Doctor of Laws at Bates College in Maine. Daisy and her husband, Paul,
have two sons, Peter and Jeffrey. Peter is involved in finance and lives in
England with his wife, Flora Fraser, the renowned writer, and their two sons.
Jeffrey, a screenwriter and philanthropist involved in contemporary art, resides
in California with his wife and two children.
Paul Soros
Born in Hungary in 1926, Paul Soros
studied mechanical engineering in Budapest. When a Communist government came to
power, he began looking for a chance to escape. In 1948, as a member of the
Hungarian ski team at the Olympic games in Switzerland, he defected. Having made
his way to the US, he took a master's degree in engineering from Polytechnic
University in Brooklyn. In 1956, he founded Soros Associates, an international
engineering firm that eventually had port development, offshore terminal, and
bulk handling projects in 90 countries. Mr. Soros holds several patents in
material handling and offshore technology and is the author of more than a
hundred technical articles. He served on the Review Panel of the President's
Office of Science and Technology and received the Gantt Medal of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Outstanding Engineering Achievement
Award of the National Society of Professional Engineers. He is now active in
Paul Soros Investments, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a
board member of several corporations and non-profit organizations. Last May, he
received an honorary Doctor of Law at Bates College, ME.
Warren Ilchman grew up in Colorado.
He is a graduate of Brown University with a doctorate from the University of
Cambridge where he was a Marshall Scholar. With a career in higher education
spanning almost forty years, he has taught and administered in several
institutions including Williams College, Boston University, Harvard University,
University of California at Berkeley, SUNY and Indiana University. He has served as a consultant to many
countries, foundations and international agencies including the Governments of
India, Nepal, and China; the Rockefeller Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The
Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the World Bank, USAID, the National Endowment for
the Humanities and the Department of Education. He has authored or edited
eighteen books, the most recent of which is entitled The Lucky Few and the
Worthy Many: Selecting the World's Future Leaders (Indiana University Press,
2004). His field of expertise is philanthropy and public policy. He has been
with the Program since its inception on January 7th, 1998. He is on the boards of the General Theological
Seminary and Westchester Community Foundation. In the Fall of 2002 and
2003, he was a Distinguished Ella Walker Fellow at the Rockefeller Conference
Center in Bellagio, Italy, where among other things, he convened with his wife
an international conference on nationally and internationally competitive
scholarships.