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Alice Gerow, Sobti Family Fellow, 2017-18
CASI is pleased to announce the third Sobti Family post-baccalaureate Fellow, Alice Gerow C'17, for the 2017-18 year.
Established through a gift from Penn parents, Rajiv Sobti, Gr'84, and Slomi Sobti, the Sobti Family Fellowship is the first program at Penn to provide funding for a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania to conduct an independent research project in India.
Alice Gerow grew up in France and graduated in May 2017 from the College of Arts and Sciences with a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. As the 2017-18 Sobti Family Fellow, she will be working with Jana Urban Services for Transformation, an urban inclusion think tank in Bangalore, in parallel with Jana Small Finance Bank. She will spend the first three months working on a project that aims to advance Small and Medium Enterprise financing by leveraging the tenets of customer-centricity in the development of services and delivery channels that address obstacles to firm growth within this critical sector of the Indian economy and resolve existing blockages in SMEs' access to adequate financing.
Alice's previous international experiences include conducting research on financial technologies in East Africa as a Fellow at the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. For her senior project, Alice explored the intersection of digital technology and social protection by studying welfare in India from a historical and political perspective.
"In the context of my studies, I only caught a glimpse of the contrasts that seem to make up the teeming baffling world of modern India, yet I became drawn to this country singular for its heterogeneity, where different cultures, languages, and religions seem to have found an equilibrium that has not been possible for many other countries. Beyond academic musings on the opportunities and challenges this heterogeneity poses to social mobility and growth, I look forward to drowning out the tunes of my mediocre tabla skills in the noise of the city."
Pictured above: Alice Gerow C'17 with Rajiv Sobti Gr'84